


the place you need to reach

by fairgraves



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: F/M, Snowed In, a snow storm + a cabin + sass and snark + bed sharing, bed sharing, but like with enemies so it's inherently wrong, suggestive talk but no smut because the author is a prude
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2020-10-05 17:43:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20492738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairgraves/pseuds/fairgraves
Summary: The board in his office displayed a map of the Whitetail Mountains, and she had taken some of that red thread he loved to weave around tacks to connect pictures of his enemies with their last-known-locations. When inspiration struck, and she just happened to have escaped from her cage, she connected her photo to a notecard decked out in hearts and flowers that read: YOU DON’T STAND A FUCKING CHANCE, JACOB SEED.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic comes from the Hozier song "Arsonist's Lullaby".
> 
> Also, this is not beta'd or anything, so apologies if you spot some glaring errors.
> 
> ||| 8/26 ETA: I cannot believe it's been nearly a year since I posted the first chapter! Time flies when a global pandemic rips through the world, doesn't it? Since last year, I've decided to go in a slightly different direction with this fic, so I did make some small updates to the first chapter to fit with the new approach (namely the bit I was unhappy with the most - the Only You tape in the truck was cut - I'm going a different way).
> 
> Finally, my original disclaimer still holds true even with the change in direction, so if you're reading this, please note: Never spoon with a man who doesn't treat you well. Definitely don't fuck a man who brainwashes you.

Maya liked to the think that she had reached an understanding about who the Seeds were fundamentally as human beings and could predict pretty consistently how they would react to even the slightest bit of provocation. She was fond of taunting them all, but had slowly gravitated to Jacob because he proved to be the biggest challenge. If Joseph and Faith floated somewhere down an even-keeled middle, vacillating between anger and concern over her exploits, and John was the hot-tempered reactionary, then Jacob was the polar opposite from John, and the man gave her _nothing_.

Jacob was cool, distant, and a man of seemingly infinite patience and that was _unacceptable_.

Maya tried so hard to break him and she was relentless about it too: if he captured her, she’d heckle him from her cage in the Veteran’s Center’s yard; if she hadn’t heard from him in a day or so, she’d radio him at two am, drunk out of her mind, and sing him choppy, off-key renditions of Motown ballads; and if he didn’t respond to her calls? His outposts were as good gone just as soon as her hangover subsided.

She never assumed a foul message tacked to the cork board in his office would spur him into action against her, but there was at least a little part of her that delighted in that all the same. The board in his office displayed a map of the Whitetail Mountains, and she had taken some of that red thread he loved to weave around tacks to connect pictures of his enemies with their last-known-locations. When inspiration struck, and she just happened to have escaped from her cage, she connected her photo to a notecard decked out in hearts and flowers that read: YOU DON’T STAND A FUCKING CHANCE, JACOB SEED.

The Seeds normally let her tool around for a bit before they picked her up again, but not this time, and it turned out that she was all wrong because Jacob Seed _did_ stand a fucking chance, and a very good one, in fact. Embarrassingly enough he captured her before she even realized he was tracking her. How he even managed to rig a trap so complex and hidden out of rope and wood was beyond her, but boy did he look smug when he sauntered up to her while she was struggling to get out of it.

He greeted her dryly, in between eating small handfuls of peanuts, “Not a chance, huh?”

When he got up close, she could see the glimmer in his blue eyes. _Pride_. 

She scowled and seethed while he pulled her weapons from their hip holsters and tossed them into the snow-covered forest floor beside him. When he felt relatively sure she wasn’t hiding anymore weapons on her person, he cut her free and told her to turn around and start walking in the direction she had come from. Maya didn’t see the point in arguing with him when he had a gun pointed at her and she sure as hell didn’t think she was going to best him in hand to hand combat when he holstered his weapon either, so she just started walking with a sigh.

The snow had started to fall and the night had come on pretty quickly so Maya was relieved when they came upon Jacob’s truck about a mile and a half away from where he first found her. The animals in these woods were vicious and she didn’t want to happen upon one by accident.

The truck was parked alongside the road, where anyone could steal it if they had the inclination, but Maya guessed no one would want to. She knew next to nothing about vehicles, but Jacob’s truck looked exactly like the one her grandfather had driven throughout her childhood. The frame was boxy and all hard angles, and when Jacob opened the creaky driver side door, she laid eyes on a threadbare bench seat, a long-handled stick shift that went straight to the floor without the support of a center console, and a cassette tape deck. 

Maya smiled beatifically as she passed him to climb in. “Well, would you look at that, Jake, your truck is as old as you are.”

No verbal response, of course, but she did notice he involuntarily clenched his jaw and looked to the heavens as if he was praying to God for strength.

They were about a thirty-minute drive away from the Center, and travel time would probably increase now that the snow was falling harder, so she settled in beside him (his command – he didn’t want her near the door), and they rode in silence, their bodies swaying with the truck as they wound through the mountains eastward. Leaning into him had advantages – his body was like a furnace and he kept her warm – but it was also _pleasant_, strange as that seemed.

It was a shame then, that it had to end.

She reached under his forearm to grab the steering wheel with one hand and the stick shift with the other. She tugged at both as hard as she could at the same time but when she realized that wasn’t enough, she rammed her foot down on his and sped the vehicle up. He tried to course correct but it was already too late – the snow and ice packed on the dirt road did the rest for her. The truck careened across the road, flew through a mound of snow and tipped sideways into what she thought was a long stretch of a snow-covered field. If she hadn’t been so quick to jump out of the truck, she might have taken in her surroundings and realized what a colossal mistake she was making.

Because Jacob hadn’t crashed into a snow-covered field like she thought. He had crashed into a small outcropping of rocks and teetered on the side of a half-frozen lake, covered in a soft layer of snow.

Her flight instinct had firmly taken hold of her body and she shot out the passenger side door to flee, but she only got about six feet away from the truck before the ice gave way. The cold water swallowed her whole and then the truck too, sinking into the water on the same side that she had jumped out of.

Jacob managed to jump out of the truck before it submerged, but he went into the water after her anyway. The sinking truck managed to break up most of the ice, allowing him to wade into the water and then swim as he got closer to her. Whether he was rescuing her or reclaiming her, Maya couldn’t say, but he grabbed her wrists and pulled her to the shore with a few grunts. They both huffed and puffed on the shoreline for a few moments, their breathing ragged with exertion, and then Jacob began walking, tugging her behind him. Maya didn’t know where they were going, but he seemed to have an idea.

The Veteran’s Center was too far away to walk to, the truck was sunk, and they had no radio to call for help. She was beginning to slow down, the cold really settling into her bones and making her weary. If they didn’t get to where they were going fast, they were as good as dead. She could only imagine what everyone would think from both sides if they found them together on the side of the road, frozen in a ditch, with Jacob’s hand still clutching her forearm like he was dragging her into hell.

He kept their pace brisk, turned down a side road and then a dead-end road off of that, with the sounds of their boots crunching along the ground and the chatter of her teeth being the only sound she could hear. He looked over his shoulder once at her, little icicles forming in his beard, and she vaguely registered him saying things to her, but she couldn’t quite make out what. Either way, he didn’t seem to be too bothered that she wasn’t responding. He was a man on a mission – focused on the task at hand – and before long they arrived at their destination: a small cabin, tucked neatly into the forest.

At the door, Jacob rooted in his pocket and produced a ring of keys. He was trembling against the wind and cold and he was struggling to keep his hand still enough to unlock the door.

When he finally succeeded and the door swung open he let out an audible sigh of relief. 

Jacob didn’t waste time – he pulled her in the cabin, closed the door behind them, and was on her almost immediately. He moved her braids away from her ears and tilted her head this way and that, grabbed her hands and ran his thumbs across her knuckles, and then bent down and began unlacing her boots. She lost her balance and wobbled back against the front door, rattling the little plate glass window, when he lifted her leg and slipped her first boot and sock off. When he went for her second boot, she had enough sense at least to grab onto his broad shoulders to stay steady. This, like the failed conversation with her, was a mystery.

“W-what are you…?”

“Hypothermia,” he explained, standing to tower over her, and then, “Now strip.”

She struggled to understand what he was telling her to do and he didn’t give her a chance to ask him to clarify. He kicked off his own boots, let his camo jacket fall to the ground, and then disappeared into a room off the main living area, leaving her to stand dumbly at the door.

When he reappeared, his wet clothes had been discarded and he was wearing a new pair of jeans and nothing else – no shirt, no socks – and he had a bundle in his arms.

“Do you need help undressing? You have to get your wet clothes off.”

Was it just her or was he talking louder and slower, enunciating his words carefully so she could understand him?

“W-what? No, I…”

He handed her over a white t-shirt and laid the blanket over the top of the oak bench beside the entrance. “This safehouse doesn’t get much use, so I’ve only got a spare outfit here. The t-shirt should do while your clothes are drying. Change while I get the fire going.”

Maya nodded.

“Good. You can use the blanket to warm up with too when you’re finished changing.”

He stooped to pick his jacket off the floor and then gave her some privacy, and with his back turned he began to pick through the small wood pile on the opposite wall and stack them in the hearth to light.

She watched him work for a minute longer, her eyes trailing after his movements, over his defined muscles, and cataloguing his scars. She had been well-acquainted with the scars on Jacob’s arms and face, but seeing him exposed like this felt different, and far more vulnerable. Unlike his brothers, he had no sins etched into his skin, nothing carved into his flesh on purpose on his chest or his back that she could see. Instead, she saw something much worse, scars on his back that had to have been put on there by someone else: a circular scar, low on his back (gunshot?); faint white striped scars from left to right (a switch or belt from his childhood days?); a wide variety of different sized scars peppering the entirety of his back (shrapnel?).

“Are you done yet?” He asked, jogging her memory, and striking a match to throw into the fireplace.

_Of course_, she jolted into action, _my task_.

She peeled off her wet clothes and slipped Jacob’s t-shirt over her head. The white cotton t-shirt’s hem fell to her mid thighs, and her bottom was bare, but the shirt would cover enough of her for now.

She incrementally began to feel warmer – the dry t-shirt, the blanket she cocooned herself with, and the fire were all helping. When her thoughts had finally collected enough to spur her into moving, she crossed the room towards the fireplace, laid her wet clothes in front of the fire next to Jacob’s, and sat cross-legged on the floor between the clothes and the armchair he was sitting in.

Maya looked up at him through her lashes and tried to make herself a bit smaller when he swept his gaze over her. He was an intimidating man, watchful and stern, but more than that she was embarrassed that her escape attempt had gone so terribly wrong. He sat back in his armchair with his long legs outstretched, an elbow resting on the arm of the chair, and his cheek resting in his palm lazily.

She felt a tiny twinge in her belly.

Was this fear or embarrassment, that she was feeling? Would fear or embarrassment really make her feel like she wanted to climb into his lap though?

_Oh god, _she realized in horror_, was this misplaced desire?_

He wore a serious expression as he regarded her, his brows furrowed in thought, but there was something else lingering behind his gaze too that she was trying to make sense of and couldn’t.

_Best to leave well enough alone_, she thought, and when the moment passed between them, they turned back to the fire.

They stayed like that for a while in silence, with Maya’s mind floating back to how she would get away, but they were only half-hearted attempts at scheming. She knew she wouldn’t be leaving the cabin anytime soon without dry clothes and a car depending on how the weather fared. She’d have to stick it out for the night at least, playing house and pretending to be domesticated with Jacob.

She might as well make it worth her while.

“Are you mad at me for sinking your truck?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, “I’m annoyed, but I would have been disappointed in you if you hadn’t tried to get away.”

“I find you puzzling, Jacob,” she murmured, “What makes you tick?”

He considered her question and then shrugged, noncommittally.

“There’s got to be something. John is so easy to anger; Joseph, so even-keeled; but I just can’t figure you out. Nothing I’ve done, _including_ crashing your truck and sinking it in a frozen lake so much as registers with you as anything higher than an annoyance. Why is that?”

He responded with questions of his own, “Do you want me to be angry with you? Would that make it easier for you to wreak havoc and get on my nerves?”

“Don’t deflect.”

He shrugged again, but this time he actually answered her directly. “I don’t need to expend my anger like you do. What does yours give you, besides witty rejoinders and a penchant for explosions?”

Maya hummed thoughtfully and then remembered his criminal record. “I’d believe that line more if I didn’t know about your past arson conviction, Jacob.”

He scoffed at that, pulled the blanket off of her, and walked to the bedroom. Apparently talks about his past that he didn’t initiate were conversation enders.

“Hey,” she yelled after him, “was that really necessary?” 

“Nothing personal, Deputy. There’s just one blanket, one bed, and I’m going to sleep now.”

Jacob grinned and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving her to her own devices. For someone stuck in an enclosed space with his enemy, he was awfully confident she wouldn’t try anything more tonight.

* * *

Hours later, when the fire died down to embers, she woke up in Jacob’s chair with a start. She had tucked her legs and arms into the shirt and curled up into a little ball, but that wasn’t enough to keep the cold away and she realized dismally her clothes were still damp. She stood up and walked to the threshold of his bedroom. 

“Jacob?” He didn’t answer at first, so she said his name again.

“Deputy?” He responded, his voice gravelly with sleep. His eyes fluttered open and when his vision had adjusted he looked over to her standing in the doorway. Even in the dim light of the bedroom, she could see his gaze drop to her legs and then back up to her face. 

There was that twinge again deep in her belly. 

“I’m cold.”

She could have asked him to get the fire going again, but didn’t bother. That’s not really what she wanted from him, was it?

He responded the way she hoped he would – by lifting the covers for her. An invitation.

And judging by the look in his eye, a dare.

Never one to shy away from a dare, she accepted the invitation, and when she was under the covers and he opened his arms, she accepted that invitation too. The rush of warmth through her whole body was immediate when he enveloped her in his arms and embarrassingly she sighed at the contact. 

“So,” she whispered to break the tension, her breath fanning across his chest, “this is what it’s like to spoon with your enemy?”

“Spooning is when both people face the same way.”

She tucked her arms between them and splayed her fingers across his stomach, running her fingertips across some of the scars she found there. She didn’t dare to catch his gaze, or to own up to what they were both willingly about to do.

He responded by placing a small, cautious kiss to her collarbone. 

“I think I like it better this way.”

“I do too,” he conceded, his hand grazing the soft, exposed skin of her thigh, and up to her hip. When he was sure she didn’t object, he grabbed ahold of her and pulled her across the last bit of distance between them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. I'm back. Nearly a year later.
> 
> ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

Maya had been unceremoniously awakened by Jacob wrenching himself free from her and jumping out of bed frantically, pulling on his jeans and rushing into the living room. A second later, when a greasy-haired cult soldier walked by the bedroom window toward the front porch, she realized why: his Chosen had found him, and he was about to be caught cozying up with the Project’s enemy. Maya stayed absolutely still under the blanket, heart beating wildly against her ribs.

There were two windows in the bedroom on the same wall facing the road the soldier would have come into the property on. She didn’t think he had noticed her through the second window he passed – he had not even looked her way – but she wasn’t sure of what he saw before Jacob had jumped out of bed and woke her up.

Jacob collected her belongings from the adjoining living space and tossed them at her, closed the bedroom door between them, and opened the front door all before the Chosen soldier could even knock. Maya got out of bed quietly and put her clothes on as carefully as possible, listening from the bedroom.

The man at the door seemed to know Jacob well enough not to fawn over him and was brazen enough to question him about his night. The Project’s Chosen had been looking for him all morning after he hadn’t made it back to the Center last night, so Jacob gave the man a very brief synopsis of the last 12 hours, but left out all mention of Maya (which suited her just fine). He had crashed his truck in the lake, taken shelter, and was waiting out the storm.

Alone.

The man accepted the story without any further questions, waited for Jacob to finish dressing and pack up, and then they both left the cabin for the Center together, leaving Maya alone, closed off in the bedroom, to fend for herself.

* * *

It had been a week since she saw Jacob last. After he had left her at the cabin, she had disappeared into the woods and laid low, avoiding her friends and duties as a leader in the Resistance. She scavenged for food and clean clothes in abandoned cabins, never staying in one place for too long, and never trying to take over any other strongholds in the area.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t believe in the cause anymore – one night with Jacob Seed wasn’t going to change her outlook on the Project – but she was distracted and anxious because she realized, horrifically, and all of a sudden, that she wanted _more_ of him.

Maya knew meeting up with him again would be a bad idea and she hadn’t originally intended on doing so, but when Jacob contacted her on a Wednesday afternoon on her frequency with a time, she had a change of heart.

The last time she had been at the cabin she had locked the door on the way out as she suspected Jacob would have wanted, but left one of the bedroom windows unlatched. She had told herself that if she was ever in the area and needed food, she could break in and out before the Project got wind of her presence. The place had stacks upon stacks of canned food in the cupboard and it was only a safehouse, so she wasn’t even sure if they’d notice missing food anyway.

Her thieving foresight had paid off and she used it to her advantage. She arrived at the cabin much earlier than the agreed upon time, and used her time wisely to check for traps, eat, and get out of the cold. Hoisting herself up into the window was a bit of a challenge, but she managed it well enough to get in.

Maya had nearly finished eating all the jellied cranberry sauce out of a pilfered can when Jacob appeared at the door, with rosy cheeks and snow in his hair. She knew he hadn’t seen her at first because he made a motion to get his keys out of his pocket, but she set her can down on the kitchen counter and opened the door for him before he got the chance.

“You’re here early,” he said, by way of greeting, “Awfully eager, aren’t you?”

She moved aside so he could enter, and as he passed her he did so with one raised brow and a smirk on his face that held her attention longer than it should have. He wanted to hear her admit that she was eager to see him, but her pride would not allow it.

“That’s rich coming from the man who made the call to me _first_.”

The reminder did not deflate his ego in the least. In fact, it only seemed to amuse him more.

“Touché.”

This pleasant exchange between them was both strange and appealing. In this cabin, they could play at coming home after a long day’s work to the people that they liked the most, but the thought that they were both playing at domestication hit Maya with a bittersweet ache. This was all a pantomime of normalcy that neither would ever get in their real lives.

She tried to push the thought out of her mind and focus on other things, so she stuck with his physicality, like how Jacob had presented himself to her. Maya noted with satisfaction that he had cleaned up nicely and ditched his usual ratty t-shirt and camo he seemed to prefer for a long sleeve henley and a pair of jeans. He would not be wearing either for long if she had her way, but it was the effort that counted.

And he wasn’t the only who wanted to hear the other own up to their motives. She longed for the admission from him, so she asked him, as sweet as she could muster, “So why did you want to meet anyway, Jacob?”

He hung his jacket up and settled onto the bench near the door to unlace his boots. A feigned introspection overtook him and he considered the question for a moment. He was playing with her; giving her a taste of her own medicine by avoiding the confession she most wanted to hear. He slipped his boots off and stood, towering over her tiny frame.

“I thought this was a date.”

“If _this_,” she said emphatically, looking around the room to make a point, “is what you think a date is…”

He grinned at her protest, and the sight of it effectively cut her off from her train of thought.

“We met at a specified time and place and I can see that you ate food on my dime. Maya, honey, that’s a _date_.”

They were even closer now, but she didn’t have a clue as to when she had closed the gap between them, she only recognized that she had moved when she had to strain her neck to look up at him. She was swept up in this conversation, this act, with him.

“Are you going to run out on me again?”

“I hadn’t planned on it,” he answered earnestly.

“Good,” she said, urging him to take his shirt off, while she unbuckled his belt and pulled it off of him. She reveled at how his breath caught when her knuckles grazed his stomach. “Now go have a seat in your chair. I’ve been thinking about fucking you on it since the last time we went on a _date_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been told that my non-American readers may not know what jellied cranberry sauce is. Like most American food, it's highly processed (and delicious). For those that don't know, it comes in a can and is a gelatinous cranberry solid that can be mushed up (hence the sauce bit). I chose it for this fic because it's especially popular in the state of Georgia, which FC5 tells us is the birthplace of Jacob, Joseph, and John. I don't know why I felt like that was important for me to say to you, but there you have it. There's your random fact for the day. 
> 
> Also, are people still even interested in FC5 stories? I've got a significant amount written for the next three chapters of this already, but I'm not sure if at this point people are even reading FC5 stuff. There's a couple of you, for sure, but it seems like the fandom has lost a lot of steam (which is not unheard of given it was released over 2 years ago). Perhaps I'm like the violin player on the Titanic, at this point. 
> 
> Finally, the last three chapters of this would be far darker in tone than the first two. If I do decide to post them, the next chapter will probably/hopefully/maybe be up within the next week or so, but if this dies, I promise you got the best bits. :D


End file.
